The Innocents: Netflix's supernatural thriller transcends superhero tropes to tell an engaging story of love

In many ways, Netflix’s new web series The Innocents deals with the physical and emotional changes that teenagers often struggle with. For one, it exercises creative freedom to allude to body image among teens – an issue that has been known to cause severe mental trauma among youngsters of a certain age bracket. Then again, it deals with other important subjects as parental control, first love and leaving the nest with limited understanding of the big, bad world. Finally, it dabbles in the most sensitive of all topics – how does a young woman navigate the guilt of her own desires and discover what she truly wants in life? And the commendable thing is that the series does all of these and more under the garb of an entertaining supernatural thriller. [caption id=“attachment_5158821” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  The Innocents. Image via Twitter/@Westallenearth1[/caption] Multiple films and shows have addressed the issue of identity crisis in young men and women. Some of the modern superhero films have made a staple diet of it; making it an essential ingredient in laying the foundations of a vigilante crime-fighting career. But The Innocents is unlike any of those stories. Here, the young girl who possesses the supernatural powers never quite learns to control it and is hence never able to make the best use of it. And this adds a layer of frustration to the story – making it darker than your average superhero fare. A 16-year-old couple run away from home in their small English town. There’s June – the protagonist of the show – a pretty little less eager to flee her controlling and overprotective step-father. And there’s Harry, who loves his parents but elopes with June because her father would surely find them in their town. But before they can begin to bask in the warmth of their new-found freedom, Harry watches – in great horror – as June undergoes a physical transformation to ‘become’ someone else. Harry soon learns that June is what is known as a ‘shapeshifter’ and that she is herself unaware of this power-slash-condition of hers. As the couple struggles to come to terms with this horrifying discovery, Harry sticks by a picking June’s side, never leaving her. But as more and more secrets begin to confront them, their relationship begins to come under stress. To make matters even worse, they soon learn that June is not the only one with shifting abilities and there are others – some of them quite close by. The makers of the show throw in an assembly of interesting characters – each of whom have a mysterious backstory to tell. There’s June’s well-meaning but overprotective father, who harbours a secret of his own. There’s her crippled brother, who stays in the family barn for some reason. There’s Harry’s mother who is a police officer, and who is investigating an old baffling case that still remains unsolved over the years. There’s Harry’s father who has been left mentally handicapped after an incident involving June’s long-lost mother. There’s a mysterious man who claims to know where June’s mother is and wants to unite the two. And finally, there’s a soft-spoken and charismatic scientist leading a ‘sanctum’ for shifters in the beautiful mountains of Norway, trying to find a cure for their condition. While the show managed to keep me hooked, I was rather irritated at times with its pace. It moves like a snail at times, with enough ‘fillers’ to make you want to skip sections. There are some unnecessary sub-plots and characters thrown in as well – which have no bearing on the main story whatsoever – but I guess that is a feature of the format. What would have really helped in making the show tense and terse is to chop off at least two episodes out of the eight, trimming down to focus on June’s search for her mother, as she struggles to deal with her own identity. Having said that, I can’t deny the fact that The Innocents has mood. Switching back and forth between a suburban small town and London’s nightclub world and then to the beautiful Norwegian fjords, it successfully builds worlds that we find ourselves inhabiting with equal ease. The relationship between the characters have also been beautifully captured, although I would have liked to see a bit more father-daughter time between June and John McDaniel. The performances are good – especially those of the lead pair – Sorcha Groundsell as June and Percell Ascott as her lover Harry. The two lovebirds are soon stripped off their innocence in ways they had never expected, and in this process lies a beautiful commentary on the many ways a young and brave couple’s confidence can be shattered by a dark and ruthless world, and how they can face their fears to turn into a matured man/woman from a naïve boy/girl. Among the other performances, Guy Pearce is a sight for sore eyes, as the benign and much-loved Ben Halvorson, who has dedicated his whole life sheltering shifters and trying to find a cure for them. The Innocents is not your regular run-of-the-mill supernatural show, nor is it merely a teenage elope drama. Nestled somewhere in between, it is a beautiful and engaging tale of love beyond physicality. It asks us a simple question – what would you do if the person you love wasn’t the same person anymore? All episodes of the first season of The Innocents is currently streaming on Netflix.